Looking Into Occidental Petroleum's Return On Capital Employed

Occidental Petroleum OXY reported Q1 sales of $6.45 billion. Earnings fell to a loss of $2.01 billion, resulting in a 127.95% decrease from last quarter. Occidental Petroleum reached earnings of $7.20 billion and sales of $6.80 billion in Q4.

What Is Return On Capital Employed?

Return on Capital Employed is a measure of yearly pre-tax profit relative to capital employed in a business. Changes in earnings and sales indicate shifts in a company's ROCE. A higher ROCE is generally representative of successful growth in a company and is a sign of higher earnings per share for shareholders in the future. A low or negative ROCE suggests the opposite. In Q1, Occidental Petroleum posted an ROCE of -0.05%.

Keep in mind, while ROCE is a good measure of a company's recent performance, it is not a highly reliable predictor of a company's earnings or sales in the near future.

ROCE is an important metric for the comparison of similar companies. A relatively high ROCE shows Occidental Petroleum is potentially operating at a higher level of efficiency than other companies in its industry. If the company is generating high profits with its current level of capital, some of that money can be reinvested in more capital which will lead to higher returns and earnings per share growth. In Occidental Petroleum's case, the ROCE ratio shows the amount of assets may not be helping the company achieve higher returns. Investors may take this into account before making any long-term financial decisions.

Q1 Earnings

Occidental Petroleum reported Q1 earnings per share at $-0.52/share against analyst predictions of $-0.62/share.